1626 – Giovanni Legrenzi born, Italian Baroque composer

1687 – Holy Roman Empire forces under Charles of Lorraine soundly defeat the Ottoman Empire army under Sultan Mehmed IV at the Second Battle of Mohács, resulting in unification of Hungary under Habsburg rule

1696 – Maurice Greene born, English composer; organist at the Chapel Royal, then Master of the King’s Musick

1765 – The Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II signs the Treaty of Allahabad with the East India Company, marking the beginning of British rule in India

1781 – Robert Mills born, American architect who designed the Washington Monument, U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Patent Office buildings; an early advocate of fire-resistant constitution methods

1806 – Elizabeth Oakes Smith born, American poet, author, lecturer and women’s rights activist; notable for poem “The Sinless Child” and series of feminist essays published in the New York Tribune circa 1850

1831 – Helena Blavatsky born, Russian author and theosophist, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, noted for Isis Unveiled, and The Key to Theosophy

1833 – Lillie Devereux Blake born, American author, suffragist and reformer, Civil War correspondent for the New York Evening Post, New York World and Philadelphia Press; wrote successful novels Southwold and Rockford

1851 – Isaac Singer patents the double-headed sewing machine

1865 – Joseph Lister uses disinfectant during surgery for the first time

1866 – Jacinto Benavente y Martínez born, Spanish playwright who wrote 172 works; 1922 Nobel Prize for Literature; his most famous and performed work is Los intereses creados (The Bonds of Interest)

1867 – Edith Hamilton born in Germany, American author and educator, known for her books The Greek Way and Mythology

1875 – Ettore Panizza born, Argentine composer and a leading early 20th century conductor; most noted as a composer for his opera, Aurora, and its aria “Alta en el cielo” (High in the Sky) about the Argentine flag

1876 – Mary Roberts Rinehart born, American author and playwright, known for mystery and suspense novels, best remembered for The Circular Staircase

1877 – Thomas Edison, working on transcribing telegraphic messages, discovers recording sound directly onto cylinders to play it back, leading to the phonograph (see 2002 entry)

1879 – U.S. National Archery Association holds its first tournament in Chicago IL

1881 – Vincent H. Bendix born, American pioneer in automotive and aviation inventor and industrialist; developer of the Bendix gear drive, leading to the electric starter

Cliff Dwellers, by George Bellows – 1913

1883 – Quaggas, a subspecies of plains zebra, becomes extinct when the last one dies at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam

1889 – Zerna Sharp born, American author and educator, creator of the Dick and Jane series for beginning readers

1898 – The Hawaiian flag is lowered from ʻIolani Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the flag of the United States to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawaii to the United States; six years after American planters overthrow Queen Liliʻuokalani

1977 – The space shuttle Enterprise passes its first solo flight test, taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating and then touching down in California’s Mojave Desert

1981 – Personal Computer Day * – IBM introduces the first Personal Computer, IBM PC Model 5150. Retailing at $1,565, the basic unit had 16 kB of memory. One Megabyte is about 1,024 Kilobytes – most of today’s tablets have 256 MB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal memory

1990 – American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson discovers the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton yet found, in South Dakota. It is dubbed “Sue” in her honor, displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago IL

1991 – Metallica – aka “The Black Album” – is released

1998 – Swiss banks agree to pay $1.25 billion in restitution to Holocaust survivors to settle claims for their assets

1999 – The UN General Assembly designates August 12 as International Youth Day *, to recognize and celebrate young people’s contributions to ecological, social justice and peace movements world-wide

2002 – Vinyl Record Day * is proclaimed in San Luis Obispo County CA; now sponsored by Vinyl Record Day, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the cultural influences, cover art of vinyl records, and records themselves (see 1877 entry)

2012 – The first World Elephant Day *- founded by Canadian Patricia Sims and the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation of Thailand, now sponsored in partnership with 100 other elephant conservation organizations across the globe

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.

2 Responses to ON THIS DAY: August 12, 2017

I probably owe my US citizenship to Cardinal Richelieu. My 10x-great grandfather got out of France one jump ahead of Richelieu’s hangmen. He was a Huguenot. His first act upon arriving in the Colony of Virginia was to dump his French identity as Benois Brasseur. He anglicized the name to Benjamin Brashear.

More than ten thousand other French Protestants were not so lucky. If you made a list of the top ten most evil men in human history, Richelieu would make the list, easily.